How Important Is The Filioque For Reformed Orthodoxy?

By Marc A. Pugliese

[Marc A. Pugliese is a Ph.D. candidate in Contemporary Systematic Theology at Fordham University, Bronx, N.Y.]

At the 2002 national meeting of one of the prominent conservative Reformed denominations in America, the issue was taken up as to whether it was erroneous to allow a minister seeking ordination to take exception to the filioque[1] clause in the Westminster Confession of Faith.[2] In the realm of academic theology, there has been increased questioning of the validity or necessity of the filioque, corresponding to a general tendency to demean Augustine’s many contributions as the seedbed of all of the ills of the Western world. Yet to many of us, whether layman, clergyman, or academic, the question about the filioque seems like another quodlibetal case of theological hair-splitting. The purpose of this essay is to explore the importance of the filioque for Reformed othodoxy. How important is the filioque for Reformed orthodoxy?

First, the essay will summarize the question and what really is at stake in the question. It will then briefly summarize the chief arguments against the filioque. After presenting the dilemma of affirming or denying the filioque, the essay will move into a section arguing for the importance of the filioque in orthodox Reformed theology. Finally, the conclusion will summarize the paper and its main arguments.

I. Summary of the Question

1. The Crux of the Issue

The question concerning the filioque is not whether the Son plays a role in the generation of the Holy Spirit, nor whether the Son is second in logical order in the Trinity, since the Eastern Churches admit that the Holy Spirit proceeds through (Gk. διά) the Son. Rather, the issue is whether the Son is also the ontological source of the Holy Spirit, along with the Father. That is, is the Son just as much the source of the being and divinity of the Holy Spirit as the Father is? Louis Berkhof’s statement regarding the procession of the Holy Spirit succinctly sums up what is intended by the filioque clause:

Spiration may be defined as that eternal and necessary act of the first and second persons in the Trinity whereby they, within the divine Being, become the ground of the personal subsistence of the Holy Spirit, and put the third person in possession of the whole divine essence, without any division, alienation, or change.[3]

Francis Turretin explains:

The question does not concern the temporal and external procession (which is terminated on creatures by which the Holy Spirit is sent to sanctify us and make perfect the work of salvation); but the question concerns the eternal and internal procession (which is terminated inwardly and is nothing else than the mode of communication of the divine essence, i.e., that by which the third person of the Trinity has from the Father and the Son the same numerical essence which the Father and the Son have).[4]

In other words, the point of the filioque is that the Son is also the source of the Holy Spirit along with the Father. The Holy Spirit receives the divine essence not only from the Father, but also from the Son. In the West it has been proper to make the distinction that the Holy Spirit comes from the Father alone with respect to absolute, unoriginate, unbegotten cause, because only the Father is unbegotten and unoriginate, in which case one can say that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father through (διά) the Son. However, in the West it is said that one must at the same time say that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son also, as from a mediate, originated, begotten cause, and that the Son communicates the divine essence to the Spirit in exactly the same way as the Father.[5]

In reviewing the orthodox position, Karl Rahner explains the distinction between these two points that must both be maintained:

The gift of the Father, through the Son (DS 570, 1522, 1529f., 1561, 1690, 3330). .. is the ‘Spirit’ of the Father and the Son. As self-communication of God he is God as given in love and powerful in us in love. Hence he possesses the one and the same essence as the Father, he is God, yet distinct from Father and Son, He proceeds from the Father and the Son through an eternal communication of the divine essence as the act of the Father and the Son. If we wish to mention also the relation of the unoriginate Father to the uttered, begotten Son and the unity of the act of communication, we might also and more precisely phrase it as follows (DS 1300f., 1986): the Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son.[6]

On this distinction Turretin also writes:

Since breathing virtue is numerically one in the Father and the Son, it is not good to say that in this respect the Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son (as if he was principally from the Father, but secondarily and less principally from the Son). If the mode of subsisting is considered (according to which the Father is the fountain of the deity from whom the Son emanates), not improperly in this sense is he said to proceed from the Father through the Son (as to the order and mode of procession).[7]

2. The Case against the Filioque

In addition to the well-known fact that the phrase “and from the Son” was added to the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed at a much later date,8 there are biblical and theological arguments marshaled against the filioque. Perhaps one of the most straightforward historical refutations of the filioque comes from Photius, patriarch of Constantinople (d. 895) in his Mystagogy Concerning the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit.9 Photius says that the Son Himself delivered this mystical teaching, namely that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, in John 15:26 when he speaks of the Spirit of Truth, the Paraclete, who παρὰ τοῦ πατρός ἐκπορεύεται.10 The litany of points that Photius makes can be summed up into a few important arguments.

If there are two causes in the Divine Sovereign, then the monarchy of God is betrayed.11 If procession is not limited to the Father only, then there could be additional persons beyond the three, that is, the Holy Spirit and the Son might produce other divine persons.12 Also, the ability to beget or produce is the characteristic of the Father that makes Him the Father, thus attributing procession to another of the divine persons robs the Father of the Father’s identity as such.13 If both the Father and Son produce the Spirit, then either the Son shares in the Father’s hypostasis, that is, the fatherhood that characterizes Him as such, or the Son supplements the person of the Father, which is tantamount to denying the divine perfection of the Father.[14]

Granting both the Father and the Son the power of procession places them on the same level ontologically, with the Spirit on a lower level since the Spirit does not have the power of procession; thus the filioque subordinates the Holy Spirit to the Father and the Son.[15] If the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son, then there would be two causes and hence composition in the Holy Spirit, which would contradict the divine simplicity.[16] If the Spirit were to proceed from the Father and the Son simultaneously, then this difference in divine causes results in different hypostases, and thus “induces a sundering in the uncloven, simple, and single hypostasis of the Spirit.”[17] Given that Jesus Himself allegedly gave the mystical teaching that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone, other passages in the New Testament that speak of the Spirit of Jesus or the Spirit of the Son must never be interpreted in such a way as to mean that the Spirit proceeds from the Son.[18]

3. The Dilemma

As in many theological debates, one seems forced to choose between Scylla and Charybdis, because there are just as many scriptural and theological problems with denying the filioque. The dilemma is that, on the one hand, if the Father is the sole source of the Holy Spirit and the sole person from whom the Holy Spirit comes into possession of the divine essence, then the Son is not fully equal with the Father. This is the heresy of subordinationsim (as the West alleges). However, if the Son is also the source of the Holy Spirit, then the Holy Spirit is inferior to both the Father and the Son, because the Father and the Son put a person other than themselves in possession of the divine essence, while the Holy Spirit does not do this (as the East alleges). Since neither of these logical inferences is fully acceptable, and since the Holy Spirit must proceed (as defined above) from either the Father alone, or both the Father and the Son, the fault here must lie with the human intellect’s inability to apprehend the incomprehensible mystery of the Trinity without falling into mutually exclusive dialectical choices, neither of which is orthodox. We must affirm the full and complete divinity of all three persons, and yet determine if there is a single procession or “Double Procession” of the Holy Spirit in God.

II. Reasons Why the Filioque Should Be Maintained in Orthodox Reformed Theology

1. The Eastern Church’s contention that the idea of the Holy Spirit also proceeding from the Son, in the sense intended by the filioque, did not develop in the Church until much later is not true.

Photius[19] and others claim that none of the Church Fathers nor any council has said that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son. As any survey of church history will show, the concept of the “unanimous consent of the fathers” is a chimerical ideal that does not exist in reality. In fact, there are plenty of witnesses, in the Greek as well as Latin Church Fathers, who say what the filioque affirms. Among the Greek Fathers, Athanasius (d. 373), the great defender of Trinitarian and Christological orthodoxy, said that the Spirit originates παρὰ τοῦ λόγου, and compared how the Spirit receives His deity from the Son to how the Son receives His deity from the Father.[20] Likewise defenders of Trinitarian orthodoxy, the Cappadocian Fathers bear witness to the Holy Spirit deriving His being from both the Father and the Son. In defending the Holy Spirit’s consubstantiality with the Father and Son, Basil expressly said that the Holy Spirit “has His being” from the Son.[21] Gregory Nazianzus similarly linked the Holy Spirit’s being with the being of the Son.[22] Epiphianus (367–403) referred to the Holy Spirit as proceeding from the Father and “receiving” from the Son.[23] He also said that the Spirit “has his consubstantial being” from the Father and the Son,[24] and referred to the Holy Spirit as “the bond of the Trinity”[25] similar to the way Augustine would later see the Holy Spirit as the bond of love between the Father and the Son. Cyril of Alexandria (d. 444) said that the Spirit is proper to the Son,[26] He proceeds from the Son,[27] and that He proceeds from the Father and the Son.[28] Maximus the Confessor (d. 662) said that the Holy Spirit is διὰ μέσου τοῦ λόγου, “by means of the Word.”[29] Gregory of Palamas (d. 1359) attested that the Spirit is the bond of love between the Father and the Son, much in the way Augustine did.[30]

As for the West, in the 200s Tertullian, combating Sabellian modalism in Against Praxeas, compared the Spirit to the fruit of a tree, the Father being the tree’s roots and the tree being the Son. Using similar analogies, he says the Holy Spirit is “third from God and the Son.”[31] Hilary of Poitiers (d. 367) explicitly said that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.[32] In 381 Ambrose of Milan also expressly said that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son,[33] and referred to the Son, along with the Father, as the “fount” of the Spirit.[34] In 382 a local synod in Rome interpreted the sending of the Holy Spirit by both the Father and the Son in the economy of salvation, as testified to in Scripture, as reference to the origin of the Holy Spirit.[35] Augustine’s teaching on the Holy Spirit proceeding from both the Father and the Son is, of course, well-known.

Leo the Great, who was the bishop of Rome during the Council of Chalcedon, clearly said in 447 that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son,[36] and stated explicitly that this procession is that the Holy Spirit receives His divine essence from the Father and the Son.[37] In 447, the Second Council of Toledo, directly addressing Visigothic Arianism, plainly said that the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son, which of course means that the Son is as fully divine as the Father.[38] In the following centuries further councils in Toledo said the same,[39] and Gregory the Great, bishop of Rome from 594–600, clearly said that the Holy Spirit proceeds essentially from the Son.[40]

Now while in their contexts these various statements of the Church Fathers often were said in making a point other than that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son also, they nonetheless stated that the Spirit receives His divinity from the Son just as much as He does from the Father. In fact, many of the statements about the double procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son were made in defense of Christ’s full divinity and consubstantiality with the Father; the Son is so much God as the Father that the Son likewise spirates the Spirit along with the Father, putting the Spirit in possession of the divinity just as the Father does.

While within Reformed orthodoxy tradition is not infallible, as only the Word of God is infallible, yet it is still a valid source for theological reflection. These testimonies from the Church Fathers, to which many more could be added, serve both to (1) prove that there is no paucity of testimony to the Holy Spirit’s procession from the Father and the Son among the Church Fathers and early councils, and (2) show that the intention behind the filioque was a part of Christian theology practically from its incipience and was not a novelty imported into theology at the time that the filioque clause became an official part of the creed.

2. The Reformed Confessions have consistently affirmed the Double Procession, or the filioque, with the same intention as the Western Church as a whole.

Again with the caveat that creeds or confessions are fallible and that, while sources for theology, they hold a far second place with the Word of God in Scripture, it is significant that almost every great Reformed confession that deals at length with the Trinity contains the Double Procession. These include the French Confession of Faith (1559),[41] the Belgic Confession (1561, revised 1619),[42] the Second Helvetic Confession (1566),[43] and the Westminster Confession of Faith (1647).[44]

3. John Calvin supports and argues for the filioque.

Calvin proves the filioque using Scripture by appealing to the passages that speak of the Holy Spirit as also the “Spirit of Christ” or the “Spirit of the Son”:

For this reason, the Son is said to come forth from the Father alone; the Spirit, from the Father and the Son, at the same time. This appears in many passages, but nowhere more clearly than in chapter 8 of Romans, where the same Spirit is indifferently called sometimes the Spirit of Christ [v. 9], sometimes the Spirit of him ‘who raised up Christ. .. from the dead’ [v. 11]—and not without justification. For Peter also testifies that it was by the Spirit of Christ that the prophets prophesied [2 Pet 1:21; cf. 1 Pet 1:11], even though Scripture often teaches it was the Spirit of God the Father.[45]

Similarly, later the Westminster Confession uses Gal 4:6, “Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying ‘Abba, Father,’” to prove that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son as well as from the Father.[46] Photius, of course, had already dealt with Gal 4:6 and the “spirit of Christ” passages by making the distinction between being “of” and “proceeding from”; the Scriptures say the former, which is quite unqualified and thus ambiguous in itself, but never say the latter.[47]

4. Although the filioque is not taught explicitly and expressly in Holy Scripture, it is taught implicitly and virtually, just as the Doctrine of the Trinity as a whole is only taught implicitly and virtually, not explicitly and expressly.

As just mentioned above, the Holy Spirit is sometimes called the “Spirit of the Son” and the “Spirit of Christ,” and not just the “Spirit of the Father” (Rom 8:9; Gal 4:6; Phil 1:19; 1 Pet 1:11). The “Spirit of His Son in our hearts, crying, Abba, Father” (Gal 4:6) tightly ties the Son and the Spirit together. The Holy Spirit in us is the Spirit that relates to God as a beloved Father. The Spirit in us has filial characteristics. He is called the Spirit of His Son. There seems more to the relationship between the Son and the Holy Spirit than a mutual procession from the Father. Is this Spirit ever encountered apart from the Word, the Second Person of the Trinity? An ancillary deductive proof is that if God is Spirit (John 4:24) and if the Son is fully God (John 1:1; 5:18; 8:58), then the Son must be Spirit, as 2 Cor 3:17–18[48] expressly says, and whence proceeds the Third Person of the Trinity. How can it not be, then, that the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Son as well as from the Father? The fact that the Spirit is fully the Spirit of the Son as much as the Spirit of the Father shows how the Trinity is a tight unity. In defending the Double Procession, Francis Turretin says on John 16:13–15:

Whatever the Spirit has, he has from the Son no less than from the Father (John 16:13–15), and as the Son is said to be from the Father because he does not speak of himself, but of the Father (from whom he receives all things), so the Spirit ought to be said to be and to proceed from the Son because he hears and speaks from him.[49]

Based on the statements regarding the Son in relationship to the Father in the Gospel of John, Turretin concludes that the Holy Spirit must proceed from the Son in the same way as He proceeds from the Father, by logical inference, or as the Westminster Confession says, “by good and necessary consequence.” He writes: “It is implied because the mission of the Spirit is ascribed to him and whatever the Father has, the Son is said to have equally (John 16:15).”[50]

Turretin’s point is also buttressed from John 5:18–32, where Jesus explains how many of the Father’s attributes (giving life, judging, receiving glory and honor, and resurrecting) are the Son’s as well. Jesus clearly says here that “whatever the Father does, these things also the Son likewise does” (John 5:19b). Upon such revelation is the venerable Trinitarian axiom, In Deo omnia sunt unum, ubi non obviat relationis oppositio.[51] That is, the Father and the Son share everything in common, except for their relations of origin; the Father begets and the Son is begotten. These opposing relations of origin are the only things that they do not share. Thus they both participate in the procession of the Holy Spirit, which is the relation of opposition distinguishing the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Holy Spirit from the Son. Theologically, it is argued that if the axiom is correct, then the Holy Spirit must proceed from the Son as well as from the Father, or else there would be no opposing relation of origin between the Son and the Spirit, and thus no distinction between the Son and the Spirit. Actually, Yves Congar explains that Photius’s condemnations were based on the supposition that properties differentiate the divine persons instead of solely the genetic relations of opposition.[52]

It must be readily admitted that the Scripture never openly and overtly discusses the eternal relationship between the Holy Spirit and the Son in the ontological or immanent Trinity. However, much the same can be said about eternal relationship between the Father and the Son, most of which is known from the relationship between the Father and the Son in the economic Trinity,[53] or from the relationship between the Son and the Father in salvation history. It is to the economic Trinity that we now turn.

5. The economic Trinity, including the missions of the persons of the Trinity, corresponds to the immanent or ontological Trinity.[54]

John 15:26 says that the Spirit of Truth “proceeds” or “goes out from” the Father (ἐκπορεύεται), yet this by no means constitutes a denial that He also proceeds or goes out from the Son. John 14:26 says that the Father will send the Holy Spirit without mentioning the Son, but this does not imply that the Son will not send the Holy Spirit, since, in fact, John 16:7 says that the Son will send the Holy Spirit.[55] In fact, in the same sentence in John 15:26 where He says that the Holy Spirit proceeds or goes out from the Father, Jesus also says that He will send the Holy Spirit from the Father. In this way, Photius’s “mystical teaching” in John 15:26 about the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father by no means constitutes a teaching that the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Son.

The Scriptures do clearly say, however, that the Son will send, or has sent, the Holy Spirit (John 1:33b; 15:26; 16:7; Acts 2:33). Many see here a reflection of the eternal relationship between the Son and the Holy Spirit:

And if the Son together with the Father sends the Spirit into the world, by analogy it would seem appropriate to say that this reflects eternal ordering of their relationships. This is not something that we can clearly insist on based on any specific verse (much like the Doctrine of the Trinity in general), but much of our understanding of the eternal relationships among the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit comes by analogy from what Scripture tells us about the way they relate to the creation in time.[56] 

It is natural to suppose that the double sending of the Spirit reflects, and so reveals, a double procession in the divine life-pattern, but Scripture speaks only of the former, leaving the latter totally opaque to us in fact, however much it is argued over.[57]

Since the beginnings of Christian theology, theologians have seen revelations of intratrinitarian life in the Gospel of John, especially between the Father and the Son. Examples include: “For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son to have life in himself” (John 5:26); “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself, he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does” (John 5:19); “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and now am here. I have not come on my own; but he sent me” (John 8:42);”.. . no one can snatch them out of my hand. .. no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one” (John 10:28b; 29b–30); “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me” (John 11:41); and “Philip said, ‘Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.’ Jesus answered, ‘Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, “Show us the Father”? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father and that the Father is in me?’” (John 14:8–10a). It would also seem that the references to sending and missions in the Gospel of John, too, reveal a deeper reality about the intratrinitarian life.

In fact, Karl Rahner’s famous trinitarian axiom that “the economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity, and the immanent Trinity is the economic Trinity”[58] is predicated on the fact that if God truly reveals himself in the economy of salvation, that is, in how the persons of the economic Trinity work, then the economic Trinity must reveal something about the inner, immanent, intratrinitarian divine life:

If we admit that every divine person might assume a hypostatic union with a created reality, then the fact of the incarnation of the Logos ‘reveals’ properly nothing about the Logos himself, that is, about his own relative specific features within the divinity. For in this even the incarnation means for us practically only the experience that God in general is a person, something which we already knew. It does not mean that in the Trinity there is a very special differentiation of persons.[59] 

.. . we cling to the truth that the Logos is really as he appears in revelation, that he is the one who reveals to us (not merely one of those who might have revealed to us) the triune God, on account of the personal being which belongs exclusively to him, the Father’s Logos.. .. what Jesus is and does as man reveals the Logos himself. .. here the Logos with God and the Logos with us, the immanent and the economic Logos, are strictly the same.[60]

Charles Hodge came to similar conclusions over a century earlier:

That the Latin and Protestant Churches, in opposition to the Greek Church, are authorized in teaching that the Spirit proceeds not from the Father only, but from the Father and the Son, is evident, because whatever is said in Scripture of the relation of the Spirit to the Father, is also said of his relation to the Son. He is said to be the ‘Spirit of the Father,’ and ‘Spirit of the Son;’ He is given or sent by the Son as well as by the Father; the Son is said to operate through the Spirit. The Spirit is no more said to send or to operate through the Son, than to send or operate through the Father. The relation, so far as revealed, is the same in the one case as in the other.[61]

Bishop Pearson reasoned from the economic Trinity that just as the Father is never sent by the Son because the Father did not receive the Godhead from the Son but rather the Son received the Godhead from the Father, so too, the Father and the Son are never sent by the Holy Spirit because they did not receive the Godhead from the Holy Spirit, but rather the Holy Spirit received the Godhead from the Father and the Son. Therefore, the Scriptures attest that both the Father and the Son send the Holy Spirit.[62] Karl Barth neatly summed up the importance of the economic Trinity for knowing anything about the immanent Trinity: “All our statements concerning what is called the immanent Trinity have been reached simply as confirmations or underlinings or, materially, as the indispensable premises of the economic Trinity.”[63]

6. The filioque is the only way to preserve the real distinction between the Son and the Holy Spirit.

As mentioned briefly above, the divine persons are distinguished by “mutually opposed relations.” For example, the Father cannot at the same time be His own Son, because begetting the Son is what distinguishes the Father as such. Systematic theology has traditionally averred that everything in God apart from these mutually opposed relations of origin, is “one.”

It has also traditionally been held that the activities causing the mutually opposed relations are the only “works of God” that are not the works of all three persons. As such they are works internal to God (opera ad intra). The opera ad intra are generation and spiration/procession. All works of God that terminate on a creature (i.e., are “outside” of God, or opera ad extra) are works of all three persons. These include the decrees, creation, providence, the covenants, redemption, the application of redemption, and consummation. Traditionally these external works of God can be “appropriated” or “ascribed” to one particular person (e.g., creation to the Father, redemption to the Son, and sanctification to the Holy Spirit), although in truth they are always and everywhere the works of all three persons.

The relations of generation and procession (the opera ad intra) in God produce personal attributes characterizing each of the three individual persons: The Father possesses paternity, is the only person who does an act of generation (begetting), is the only one who is unoriginated (ingenitus, innascible) and takes part in the active spiration (“breathing”; cf. “respiration”) of the Holy Spirit. The Son is the only person possessing the property of filiation or “sonship” or “begotteness,” and also participates in the active spiration of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the only person who undergoes procession and passive spiration (i.e., He is the only person who is “breathed”).[64]

The mutually opposed relations are those relations that cannot be simultaneously held by the same person (e.g., the Son cannot also be His own Father, and vice versa). The Father’s unoriginateness/unbegotteness, or His Paternity, is mutually opposed to the Son’s filiation or Sonship. The Spirit’s having been breathed or spirated (passive spiration) is opposed to the ones who do the breathing or active spiration, namely the Father and the Son. In this way all three persons stand in one mutually opposed relationship to the other two. The Father and the Son share a common attribute of active spiration, and this is not a mutually opposed relationship.

By imparting the properties unique to each individual person, the mutually opposed relations of origin provide the attributes distinguishing the persons from one another. If the Son does not also breathe or spirate the Holy Spirit, then there is no relation of opposition between the Son and the Holy Spirit (i.e., active spiration vs. passive spiration). Louis Berkhof summarizes:

The following points of distinction between the two may be noted, however: (1) Generation is the work of the Father only; spiration is the work of both the Father and the Son. (2) By generation the Son is enabled to take part in the work of spiration, but the Holy Spirit acquires no such power. (3) In logical order generation precedes spiration. It should be remembered, however, that all this implies no essential subordination of the Holy Spirit to the Son. In spiration as well as in generation there is a communication of the whole of the divine essence, so that the Holy Spirit is on an equality with the Father and the Son.[65]

7. The analogy of spiration or “breathing” confirms the filioque.

If, as argued above, the economic trinity or economic missions of the divine persons reflect intratrinitarian realities, the eternal spiration or breathing of the Holy Spirit by the Son is reflected in Jesus’ impartation of the Holy Spirit through breathing (John 20:22). Turretin writes of John 20:22 that the “temporal procession presupposes the eternal.”[66] Lewis Sperry Chafer comments in his systematic theology:

.. . the very term by which the third person in the trinity is designated WIND OR BREATH may, as to the third person, be designed, like the term Son applied to the second, to convey, though imperfectly, some intimation of that manner of being by which both are distinguished from each other, and from the Father; and it was a remarkable action of our Lord, and one certainly which does not discountenance this idea, that when he imparted the Holy Ghost to his disciples, ‘he BREATHED on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost’ (John 20:22).[67]

8. The filioque is the only way to preserve the full deity of the Son.

With respect to the divine persons of the Trinity, the Eastern Churches tend to focus on the Father as the hypostatization (embodiment) of the divine essence, who as a result is the unique fountainhead of the deity, the one bearing the deity (theotetos). However, the West notes that when the Father, through generation (gennesis), puts the Son in possession of the divine nature, He also communicates to the Son the ability to spirate or breathe the Holy Spirit. In this way the Holy Spirit is breathed from both the Father and the Son. The Father does not communicate His characteristic of “unbegottenness” (ingenitus or inascibilitas) to the Son however, because the Son by definition must be “begotten.”

Calvin argues that the fact that the Holy Spirit also proceeds from the Son must be maintained in order to preserve the full deity of the Son (a very important point), and that the Holy Spirit also proceeds from the Son shows that the Son has the entire, full divine essence or substance.

Now they are compelled from their own presupposition to concede that the Spirit is of the Father alone, because if he is a derivation from the primal essence, which is proper only to the Father, he will not rightly be considered the Spirit of the Son. Yet this is disproved by Paul’s testimony, where he makes the Spirit common to Christ and the Father [Rom 8:9]. 

Furthermore, if the person of the Father is expunged from the Trinity, in what respect would he be different from the Son and the Spirit except that only he is God himself? They confess Christ to be God, and yet to differ from the Father. Conversely, there must be some mark of differentiation in order that the Father may not be the Son. Those who locate that mark in the essence clearly annihilate Christ’s true deity, which without essence, and indeed the whole essence, cannot exist. Certainly the Father would not be different from the Son unless he had in himself something unique, which was not shared with the Son. Now what can they find to distinguish him? If the distinction is in the essence, let them answer whether or not he has shared it with the Son. Indeed, this could not be done in part because it would be wicked to fashion a half-God. Besides, in this way they would basely tear apart the essence of God. It remains that the essence is wholly and perfectly common to Father and Son. If this is true, then there is indeed with respect to the essence no distinction of one from the other. 

If they make rejoinder that the Father in bestowing essence nonetheless remains the sole God, in whom the essence is, Christ then will be a figurative God, a God in appearance and name only, not in reality itself.[68]

Calvin also says:

Furthermore, this distinction is so far from contravening the utterly simple unity of God as to permit us to prove from it that the Son is one God with the Father because he shares with the Father one and the same Spirit; and that the Spirit is not something other than the Father and different from the Son, because he is the Spirit of the Father and the Son. For in each hypostasis the whole divine nature is understood, with this qualification—that to each belongs his own peculiar quality. The Father is wholly in the Son, the Son wholly in the Father, even as he himself declares: ‘I am in the Father and the Father in me.’ [John 14:10] And ecclesiastical writers do not concede that the one is separated from the other by any difference of essence. By these appellations which set forth the distinction (says Augustine) is signified their mutual relationships and now the very substance by which they are one. In this sense the opinions of the ancients are to be harmonized, which otherwise would seem somewhat to clash. Sometimes, indeed, they teach that the Father is the beginning of the Son; sometimes they declare that the Son has divinity and essence from himself, and thus has one beginning with the Father.. .. Therefore, when we speak simply of the Son without regard to the Father, we well and properly declare him to be of himself; and for this reason we call him the sole beginning. But when we mark the relation that he has with the Father, we rightly make the Father the beginning of the Son.[69]

While Calvin’s doctrine of the theotetos of the Son[70] may seem to mitigate against this understanding, later Reformed theologians make the distinction that the Father does not produce the divine essence of the Son, but rather communicates it to the Son. Louis Berkhof says that the generation of the Son by the Father

is a generation of the personal subsistence rather than of the divine essence of the Son. Some have spoken as if the Father generated the essence of the Son, but this is equivalent to saying that He generated His own essence, for the essence of both the Father and the Son is exactly the same. It is better to say that the Father generates the personal subsistence of the Son, but thereby also communicates to Him the divine essence in its entirety.[71]

All of this to say that Calvin’s stress on the full deity of the Son is certainly support for the inclusion of the filioque in Reformed theology, and against its exclusion, since denial of the filioque has been associated with a subordination of the Son to the Father. This results in a subordination of the Son’s essence and deity, and not just the Son’s mission.

9. Denying the filioque results in denying crucial aspects of orthodox soteriology.

In the graduate Trinity course at Fordham University, Aristotle Papanikalaou insisted that the filioque is not only an issue of speculation concerning the inner workings of the Godhead, but it is also the doctrine of God’s life for us, pro nobis. In other words the filioque has implications for soteriology and God’s economy of salvation. Papanikalaou, who is Greek Orthodox, remarked, “There is something lacking in trinitarian theology when you do not relate the Son and the Spirit together as does the filioque.”

If the aspect of salvation in which God comes to us and communicates himself to us (regeneration, indwelling, and sanctification by the Holy Spirit) is to be always and necessarily tied to the Son, Jesus Christ, then the Holy Spirit must be as completely the Spirit of Christ or of the Son as He is the Spirit of the Father. That is, the Holy Spirit cannot only come through the Son, but must proceed from the Son, as from a source. It is only in this way that the axiom “No one who denies the Son has the Father (1 John 2:23a)” is fully true. In fact, some who are trying to answer the question of salvation in other religions and communities outside the realm of the gospel appeal to a universal working of the Holy Spirit independent of the Word or the person of Jesus Christ.[72]

Also, the fact that the filioque preserves the full deity of the Son bears on salvation since the Son must be fully and completely God in order for Him to be able to effect salvation. Athanasius made this same argument against the Arians in the fourth century. Since salvation is only ever from the LORD, Jesus Christ must be fully God as much as the Father, which the filioque is intended to aver.

Louis Berkhof cites key Arminians who held to a subordinatationist Christology that bordered on, if not became, neo-Arianism.[73] The connection between Arminian theology and Arian christology is that the more that man can do to save himself, the less supernatural, divine power is needed. If man can do something to save himself, then salvation is not entirely dependent on the Almighty God. The divinity and transcendence of Christ decrease in direct proportion to the power of man to work something for his own salvation. That the Reformed tradition has always held the full and complete divinity of Christ as of utmost importance is seen from Calvin with his theototes of the Son, up to Karl Barth, who spends the second half of the first volume of his Church Dogmatics arguing for the full and complete divinity of Christ within the context of discussing the Trinity.

This is related to the filioque insofar as the filioque is an assertion of the full and complete divinity of the Son, as discussed above. The East alleges that the West is too “Christocentric,” a symptom of which is the filioque. Is not the preeminence of Christ a pillar of the Reformed tradition?

The Holy Spirit is the love of God poured out into our hearts (Rom 5:5)—this corresponds to the Augustinian idea that the Holy Spirit is the bond of love between the Father and the Son. Is there any love of God apart from Jesus Christ? Karl Barth argues for the necessity of the filioque in order to make sense of the work of the Holy Spirit in uniting humans to God and the intratrinitarian divine life:

‘And the Son’ means that not merely for us, but in God Himself, there is no possibility of an opening and readiness and capacity for God in man—for this is the work of the Holy Ghost in revelation—unless it comes from Him, the Father, who has revealed Himself in His Word, in Jesus Christ, and also, and no less necessarily, from Him who is His Word, from His Son, from Jesus Christ, who reveals the Father.. .. The Filioque expresses recognition of the communion between the Father and the Son. The Holy Spirit is the love which is the essence of the relation between these two modes of being of God. And recognition of this communion is no other than recognition of the basis and confirmation of the communion between God and man as a divine, eternal truth, created in revelation by the Holy Spirit. The intra-divine two-sided fellowship of the Spirit, which proceeds from the Father and the Son, is the basis of the fact that there is in revelation or fellowship in which not only is God there for man but in very truth—this is the donum Spiritus sancti [gift of the Holy Spirit]—man is also there for God. Conversely, in this fellowship in revelation which is created between God and man by the Holy Spirit there may be discerned the fellowship in God Himself, the eternal love of God: discerned as the mystery, surpassing all understanding, of the possibility of this reality of revelation; discerned as the one God in the mode of being of the Spirit.. .. This whole insight and outlook is lost when the immanent Filioque is denied. If the Spirit is also the Spirit of the Son only in revelation and for faith, if He is only the Spirit of the Father in eternity, i.e., in His true and original reality, then the fellowship of the Spirit between God and man is without objective ground and content [i.e., Jesus Christ]. Even though revealed and believed, it is a purely temporal truth with no eternal basis, so to speak, in itself. No matter, then, what we may have to say about the communion between God and man, it does not have in this case a guarantee in the communion between God the Father and God the Son as the eternal content of its temporal reality. Does not this mean an emptying of revelation?[74]

A final practical ecclesiological note can also be made regarding the filioque. The Eastern formulation runs the danger of suggesting an unnatural distance between the Son and the Holy Spirit, leading to the possibility that even in personal worship an emphasis on more mystical, Spirit-inspired experience might be pursued to the neglect of an accompanying rationally understandable adoration of Christ as Lord.[75]

III. Conclusion

This paper has been an argument for the importance of the filioque clause for Reformed orthodoxy. First, the precise question was delineated. This question is not regarding a role of the Son in the procession of the Spirit, but rather whether the Son imparts the divine essence to the Holy Spirit along with the Father, or whether the Spirit receives the divine essence solely from the Father, through the Son. The paper then presented the arguments of Photius, an eminent Greek Orthodox theologian, against the filioque. The paper then presented the dilemma between the subordination of the Holy Spirit to the Father and Son on the one hand (when the filioque is affirmed), and the subordination of the Son to the Father when the filioque is denied.

The second part of the essay, which is also the bulk of the essay, argued nine reasons why the filioque is important for Reformed orthodoxy. The first reason was somewhat defensive in that it countered charges that the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son did not appear until much later in church history than it actually did. It was clearly seen how many of the Church Fathers, both Eastern and Western, affirmed what the filioque essentially affirms. Next the paper showed how the filioque has been an essential part of the Reformed Confessions, going back to the Reformation. The paper also presented John Calvin’s arguments for the filioque.

Next the essay argued that although the filioque is not taught explicitly and expressly in Holy Scripture, it is taught implicitly and virtually. In other words the filioque is just as scriptural as the doctrine of the Trinity, although neither doctrine is taught explicitly and unambiguously. Then it was argued that the relations between the divine persons as seen in the economy of salvation and as clearly presented by Scripture (the “economic Trinity”) are themselves reflections of the same divine relationships within the ontological or “immanent” Trinity.

Next the paper showed how the filioque is the only real way of affirming a distinction between the Son and the Holy Spirit. Since the relations of origin, which are always opposite, are what define the individual persons, so the Son must actively spirate the Spirit and the Spirit must passively be spirated in order for there to be a real distinction between the two. In conjunction with this it was shown that the scriptural notion of the Son “breathing” the Spirit corresponds to the fact that eternally the Son spirates the Spirit just as much as the Father.

The paper then showed how the filioque is the only way of preserving the full deity and Godhead of the Son. That is, if the Son is just as much God as the Father, and the Father has the power to spirate the Spirit, the Son must also have that power. Finally, denying the filioque results in denials of crucial aspects of orthodox soteriology. If only God can save, then the Son must be fully God, and therefore the Son must also spirate the Spirit with the Father. Also, since salvation is always in and through Jesus Christ, the closer link between the Son and the Spirit that the filioque maintains is crucial for discussions of how people are saved by God, that is, whether a person can be saved just through the working of the Holy Spirit apart from the divine Logos or Word.

In closing, this article is written in the hope that among Reformed Christians there will be a heightened sense of the importance of Trinitarian theology in general, and discussion of the filioque in particular. Also, the hope is that this article will show the importance of the filioque for Reformed orthodoxy, and that the Reformed churches will not take it lightly when a leader has reservations regarding this important doctrine. Let us remember that it is the Spirit of Sonship by which we cry “Abba, Father,” and by which our fellowship with the Father is maintained, a fellowship that is founded upon the objective ground and content of Jesus Christ.

Notes

1. The filioque is a technical term referring to the place in the Niceno-Constantinopolitan creed, in its present form, that says the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son. Filioque means “and from the Son” in Latin, and is the precise phrase used in the Latin version of the creed.
2. “In the unity of the Godhead there be three persons, of one substance, power, and eternity: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. The Father is of none; neither begotten nor proceeding; the Son is eternally begotten of the Father; the Holy Ghost eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son” (Westminster Confession of Faith, 2.3).
3. Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (rev. ed.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 97 (emphasis Berkhof’s).
4. Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology (ed. James T. Dennison, Jr.; trans. George Musgrave Giger; 3 vols.; Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1992–97), 3.31.1 (p. 1:308).
5. Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 95.
6. Karl Rahner, The Trinity (trans. Joseph Donceel; New York: Crossroad, 1998), 66.
7. Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 3.31.8 (p. 1:310).
8. Depending upon its date of origin, the Quicumque or “Athanasian Creed” may be the earliest confessional witness to the Double Procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son. Article 13 says: Spiritus Sanctus a Patre et Filio, non factus, nec creatus, nec genitus, sed procedens (“The Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son: not made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding”) (Heinricus Denzinger, ed., Enchiridion symbolorum et definitionum quae de rebus fidei et morum a conciliis oecumenicis et summis pontificibus emanarunt [editio altera aucta et emendata; Milwaukee, Wisc.: Christian Ott, 1855], § 136 [p. 44]). The first conciliar testimony is the Decree of Damasus, Acts of a Roman Synod, in 382. See Heinrich Denzinger, ed., The Sources of Catholic Dogma (trans. Roy J. Deferrari; St. Louis, Mo.: Herder and Herder, 1957), § 83 (p. 33). The Councils of Toledo in Visigothic Spain between 589 and 693 are other early conciliar testimonies to the filioque, as the Visigoths were Arians and the Church needed to affirm strongly the Trinitarian consubstantiality of the Son with the Father. The assertion that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son as well as from the Father is the strongest affirmation of the Son’s co-divinity and consubstantiality with the Father. The filioque first appears in the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed from the end of the eighth century, as evidenced in the proceedings of the Council of Aquileia- Friuli in 796 and that of Aix-la-Chapelle in 809 (Denzinger, Sources, §314 [p. 125]). The phrase was not admitted into the Creed used in the Roman liturgy until 1014, mainly because of conciliatory measures taken to preserve the unity of the East with the West. As is commonly known, the Western and the Eastern churches split shortly thereafter in 1054.
9. Photius, Liber Spirit. Sanct. myst., in Patrologiae graecae (ed. J.-P. Migne; 162 vols.; Paris: Garnier and Migne, 1857–86), 102:263–546. Henceforth in this essay, references to Migne’s Patrologiae graecae will be PG followed by the volume, a colon, and then the column(s). References to Migne’s Patrologia latina (ed. J.-P. Migne; 221 vols.; Paris: Garnier and Migne, 1844–64) will be PL, likewise followed by volume, a colon, and the column(s). Photius’s work exists in English translation as On the Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit (trans. Holy Transfiguration Monastery; Astoria, N.Y: Studion Publishers, 1983). References in this article to Photius’s Mystagogy are to this English translation.
10. Mystagogy, 2 (p. 69).
11. Ibid., 11-12 (p. 74).
12. Ibid., 8 (p. 72).
13. Ibid., 9-10 (p. 73), 19 (p. 77).
14. Ibid., 16 (p. 75).
15. Ibid., 17 (p. 76).
16. Ibid., 4 (p. 70).
17. Ibid., 63 (p. 96).
18. Ibid., 48 (p. 90).
19. Ibid., 5 (p. 71).
20. See Athanasius, Contra Arian. 3.24 (PG 26:376a); and Ad Serapion. 1.20 (PG 26:580a); and 3.5 (PG 26:632c).
21. “.. . he is second to the Son, having his being from him. . .” (Basil, Contr. Eunom. 3 [PG 29:653b]). This was written in 365.
22. “If ever there was a time when the Father was not, then there was a time when the Son was not. If ever there was a time when the Son was not, then there was a time when the Spirit was not” (Gregory Nazianzus, 5th Oration 31.3 [NPNF2 7:318]). This was penned in 380.
23. See Epiphianus, Ancoratus 6 (PG 43:25c); 7 (PG 43:28a); 11 (PG 43:36c); 67 (PG 43:137b); 73 (PG 43:153a); 120 (PG 43:236b); and Haer. 62 (PG 4:1056).
24. See Epiphianus, Ancoratus 8 (PG 43:29c); 9 (PG 43:32c); 67 (PG 43:137b); 70 (PG 43:148a); 71 (PG 43:148b); 72 (PG 43:152b); and 75 (PG 43:157a).
25. Epiphianus, Ancoratus 7 (PG 43:23b).
26. See Cyril of Alexandria, Comm. in Joel 35 (PG 71:377d); De recta fide ad Theod. 37 (PG 76:1189a); De SS. Trin. Dial. 7 (PG 75:1093a); and Comm. in Joan. 2 (PG 71:212b).
27. Cyril of Alexandria, Adv. Nest. 4.1 (PG 76:173a-b). In defending the deity of the Holy Spirit, Cyril argued that He is of the divine essence because He proceeds from the Father and the Son: “Since the Holy Spirit when He is in us effects our being conformed to God, and He actually proceeds from Father and Son, it is abundantly clear that He is of the divine essence, in it in essence and proceeding from it” (Cyril of Alexandria: Thes. sanct. consubst. Trin. Thesis 34 [PG 75:589–590]).
28. “The Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son; clearly, He is of the divine substance, proceeding substantially in it and from it” (Cyril of Alexandria, Thes. sanct. consubst. Trin., Thesis 34 [PG 75:585a]). See also, idem, De recta fide ad Reg. 51 (PG 76:1408b); and De ador. 1 (PG 68:148a).
29. Maximus the Confessor, Quaest. dub. interr. 34 (PG 90:813b).
30. “The Spirit of the most high Word is like an ineffable love of the Father for this Word ineffably generated. A love which this same Word and beloved Son of the Father entertains towards the Father: but insofar as he has the Spirit coming with him from the Father and reposing connaturally in him comes from the Father at the same time as it is with the Son and it naturally rests on the Son” (Gregory Palamas, Cap. phys., 36 [PG 150:1144d–1145a]).
31. Tertullian, Against Praxeas 8.1 (ANF 3:603).
32. Hilary of Poitiers, On the Trinity 2.29, 8.20, and 12.36 (NPNF2 9:60, 9:143, and 9:233). Hilary wrote this in 357.
33. “The Holy Spirit also, when He proceeds from the Father and the Son, is not separated from the Father nor separated from the Son” (Ambrose, The Holy Spirit 1.11.120 [NPNF2 10:109]).
34. “Learn now that as the Father is the Fount of life, so, too, many have stated that the Son is signified as the Fount of Life; so that, he says, with Thee, Almighty God, Thy Son is the Fount of Life. That is the Fount of the Holy Spirit, for the Spirit is Life. . .” (Ambrose, The Holy Spirit 1:15:172 [NPNF2 10:113]).
35. “For the Holy Spirit is not only the Spirit of the Father or not only the Spirit of the Son, but the Spirit of the Father and of the Son. For it is written: ‘If anyone love the world, the Spirit of the Father is not in him [1 John 2:15].’ Likewise it is written: ‘Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his [Rom 8:9].’ When the Father and the Son are mentioned in this way, the Holy Spirit is understood, of whom the Son himself says in the Gospel that the Holy Spirit ‘proceedeth from the Father [John 15:26],’ and ‘He shall receive of mine and shall announce it to you [John 16:14]’” (Decree of Damasus, Acts of a Roman Synod in Denzinger, Sources, §83 [p. 33]).
36. Leo the Great, Epistles 15 (NPNF2 12:21).
37. “And while in the property of each Person the Father is one, the Son is another, and the Holy Ghost is another, yet the Godhead is not distinct and different; for whilst the Son is the Only begotten of the Father, the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the Father and the Son, not in the way that every creature is the creature of the Father and the Son, but as living and having power with Both, and eternally subsisting of That Which is the Father and the Son” (Leo the Great, Sermons 75 [NPNF2 12:21]).
38. “The Spirit is also the Paraclete, who is himself neither the Father and the Son, but proceeding from the Father and the Son. Therefore the Father is unbegotten, the Son is begotten, the Paraclete is not begotten, but proceeding from the Father and the Son” (Council of Toledo II in Denzinger, Enchiridion symbolorum, §113 [p. 37]).
39. “He is the Spirit of both, not, however, begotten nor created but proceeding from both.. .. He is said to be the Spirit, however, not only of the Father but at the same time of the Father and the Son. For, neither does He proceed from the Father into the Son, nor does He proceed from the Son to sanctify the creature, but He is shown to have proceeded at the same time from both, because He is acknowledged to be the love or holiness of both” (Council of Toledo XI, A.D. 675, in Denzinger, Sources, §277 [p. 107]). “.. . the Holy Spirit, who because He proceeds from the Father and the Son, refers to the Father and the Son” (Council of Toledo XVI, A.D. 693, in Denzinger, Sources, §296 [p. 117]).
40. “The Spirit proceeds essentially from the Son. .. the Redeemer imparted to the hearts of His disciples the Spirit who proceeds from Himself” (Gregory the Great, In exp. Beat. Job mor. 1.22, 2.92 [PL 75:541b]).
41. .. il y a trois personnes, le Pre, le Fils, et le Saint-Esprit.. .. Le Fils éternellement engendré du Pre. Le Saint-Esprit procédant éternellment de tous deux .. . (“.. . there are three persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.. .. The Son begotten from eternity by the Father. The Holy Spirit proceeding eternally from them both.”) (The French Confession of Faith, article 6. Both the French and the English translation are from The Creeds of Christendom. Volume 3: The Evangelical Protestant Creeds [ed. Philip Schaff; rev. David S. Schaff; 3 vols.; 6th ed.; New York: Harper and Row, 1931; repr., Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998], 362–63). Calvin and his pupil De Chandieu wrote the French Confession, and Theodore Beza propagated it at Poissy in 1561.
42. See “The Father is the cause, origin, and beginning of all things, visible and invisible; the Son is the Word, Wisdom, and Image of the Father; the Holy Ghost is the eternal Power and Might, proceeding from the Father and the Son” (Belgic Confession, article 8, in The Creeds of Christendom, 389). The Belgic Confession also explicitly accepts the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds, which contain the filioque: “This doctrine of the Holy Trinity has always been defended and maintained by the true Church, since the times of the Apostles to this very day, against the Jews, Mohammedans, and some false Christians and heretics, as Marcion, Manes, Praxeas, Sabellius, Samosatenus, Arius, and such like, who have been justly condemned by the orthodox fathers. Therefore, in this point, we do willingly receive the three creeds, namely, that of the Apostles, of Nice, and of Athanasius; likewise that which, conformable thereunto, is agreed upon by the ancient fathers” (article 9, in The Creeds of Christendom, 392–93).
43. Pater ab œterno Filium generavit, Filius generatione ineffabili genitus sit, Spiritus Sanctus vero procedat ab utroque, idque ab œterno (“The Father has generated the Son from eternity, the Son is generated by an ineffable generation, and the Holy Spirit in truth proceeds from both, and the same from eternity”) (The Second Helvetic Confession, 3.3, in The Creeds of Christendom, 241). This confession was primarily composed by Heinrich Bullinger, Zwingli’s successor at Zurich.
44. Pater quidem a nullo est, nec genitus nempe nec procedens: Filius autem a Patre est œterne genitus: Spiritus autem Sanctus œterne procedens a Pater Filioque (“The Father is of none, neither begotten nor proceeding; the Son is eternally begotten of the Father; the Holy Ghost eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son”) (The Westminster Confession of Faith, 2.3, in The Creeds of Christendom, 608).
45. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (ed. John T. McNeill; trans. Ford Lewis Battles; 2 vols.; LCC; Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), 1.13.18 (p. 143). Calvin uses et filio, which corresponds to filioque, also meaning “and from the Son.”
46. See the scriptures cited in support of The Westminster Confession of Faith, 2.3.
47. Photius, Mystagogy, 48–58 (pp. 90-94). Photius argues by analogy with other scriptures that speak of the spirit “of wisdom,” “of love,” “of understanding,” “of a sound mind,” “of power,” and “of adoption,” which certainly do not mean that the Spirit proceeds from wisdom, love, understanding, a sound mind, power, or adoption.
48. Kurios is a Pauline designation for Jesus Christ.
49. Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 3.31.5 (p. 310).
50. Ibid., 3.31.7 (p. 310).
51. “In God everything is one except where there is opposition of relation.” The axiom is attributed to Anselm of Canterbury, but was expressly used in the Council of Florence (1438–45).
52. “From 867 onwards Photius condemned the Filioque in a series of texts and formulated the doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father alone: ἐκ μόνου τοῦ Πατρός. He did not understand the homogeneity of the Latin idea of the mystery of the Trinity, according to which the distinction between the Persons in their perfect consubstantiality is derived from their relationship and the opposition of their relationship—the Father and the Son are relative to one another—and that relationship is one of origin and procession. Photius, however, believed that the Persons were distinguished by personal properties that could not be communicated” (Yves Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit [trans. David Smith; 3 vols.; New York: Seabury Press, 1983], 3:58–59).
53. The “economic Trinity” is the Trinity as revealed in history in Word and in action. The “immanent” or “ontological” Trinity is the Trinity as God, in Himself (in se), has existed from all eternity, without respect to God’s relationship to creation.
54. In short, this means that the relations between the divine persons revealed in salvation history also reveal the eternal relations between the divine persons.
55. The reverse process also applies: Just because John 16:7 says that the Son will send the Holy Spirit without mentioning the Father does not imply that the Father will not send the Holy Spirit.
56. Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), 247 (emphasis Grudem’s).
57. J. I. Packer, “Holy Spirit,” in New Dictionary of Theology (ed. Sinclair B. Ferguson, David F. Wright, and J. I. Packer; Downers Grove, Ill.: Inter Varsity Press, 1988), 318.
58. See Karl Rahner, The Trinity (trans. Joseph Donceel; New York: Crossroad, 1970).
59. Ibid., 28 (emphasis Rahner’s).
60. Ibid., 30, 33 (emphasis Rahner’s).
61. Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology (3 vols.; New York: Scribner’s, 1871–72; repr., Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 1:477–78.
62. Bishop Pearson, as cited by Richard Watson, Theological Institutes (2 vols.; New York: Carlton and Phillips, 1856), 1:628–30.
63. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I/1 (ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance; trans. G. W. Bromiley; 2d ed.; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1975), 479.
64. Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 89.
65. Ibid., 97. Thomas Aquinas made the same argument we are making here: “It must be said that the Holy Ghost is from the Son. For if He were not from Him, He could in no wise be personally distinguished from Him; as appears from what has been said above (QQ.XXVIII., A. 3; XXX., A. 2). For it cannot be said that the divine Persons are distinguished from each other in any absolute sense; for it would follow that there would not be one essence of the three persons: since everything that is spoken of God in an absolute sense, belongs to the unity of essence. Therefore it must be said that the divine persons are distinguished from each other only by the relations. Now the relations cannot distinguish the persons except forasmuch as they are opposite relations; which appears from the fact that the Father has two relations, by one of which He is related to the Son, and by the other to the Holy Ghost; but these are not opposite relations, and therefore they do not make two persons, but belong only to the one person of the Father. If therefore in the Son and the Holy Ghost there were two relations only, whereby each of them were related to the Father, these relations would not be opposite to each other, as neither would be the two relations whereby the Father is related to them. Hence, as the person of the Father is one, it would follow that the person of the Son and of the Holy Ghost would be one, having two relations opposed to the two relations of the Father. But this is heretical since it destroys the Faith in the Trinity. Therefore the Son and the Holy Ghost must be related to each other by opposite relations. Now there cannot be in God any relations opposed to each other, except relations of origin, as proved above (Q.XXVIII., A. 4). And opposite relations of origin are to be understood as of a principle, and of what is from the principle. Therefore we must conclude that it is necessary to say that either the Son is from the Holy Ghost; which no one says; or that the Holy Ghost is from the Son, as we confess” (Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica 1.36.2 [trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province; 22 vols.; London: Burns Oates & Washbourne; New York: Benziger, 1914–24], 2:101–2).
66. Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 3.31.5 (p. 1:310).
67. Lewis Sperry Chafer, Prolegomena—Bibliology—Theology Proper (vol. 1 of Systematic Theology; Dallas: Dallas Seminary Press, 1947), 400.
68. John Calvin, Institutes, 1.13.23 (pp. 150-51).
69. Ibid, 1.13.19 (pp. 143-44).
70. At times Calvin argued that the Father does not communicate deity to the Son, because communicated deity is an oxymoron.
71. Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 93 (emphasis Berkhof’s).
72. See for instance, Michael Amaladoss, “The Pluralism of Religions and the Significance of Christ,” in Asian Faces of Jesus (ed. R. S. Sugirtharajah; Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1993), 85–101; Jacques Dupuis, S.J., Jesus Christ at the Encounter of World Religions (trans. Robert R. Barr; Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1991), 139–41, 166, passim; Roger Haight, S.J., Jesus Symbol of God (Maryknoll, N.Y: Orbis, 1999), 395–423; and Paul F. Knitter, Jesus and the Other Names: Christian Mission and Global Responsibility (Maryknoll, N.Y: Orbis, 1996), 112–14.
73. Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 83.
74. Barth, Church Dogmatics I/1, 480–81.
75. See Wayne Grudem’s comments to this effect in Systematic Theology, 247.